FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
LOS ANGELES, CA.
The Paul Kopeikin Gallery is proud to present AirCraft, a continuing photographic series by Jeffrey Milstein. This exhibition opens Saturday, April 21 and runs through May 19, 2007. A reception and book signing with the artist will take place on Saturday, April 21, 2007 from 6:00 to 8:00 PM. The reception is free and open to the public. The gallery is located at 6150 Wilshire Boulevard, just west of Fairfax. For information call (323) 937-0765 or visit our website at paulkopeikingallery.com.
“I freeze time and motion at a precise moment, allowing the viewer to linger, explore, and reflect, on the beauty, strength, and grace of these aircraft in their many variations. That these metal birds can gracefully lift from earth is amazing, that they can return safely some hours later on another part of the globe is even more amazing.” -- Jeffrey Milstein
This exhibition of Jeffrey Milstein’s continued photographic series AirCraft coincides with his long awaited book release “AirCraft: The Jet as Art,” published by Abrams. Milstein’s photographs of passenger airliners are captured in flight in such a way that they come alive as the amazing, efficient machines they truly are. Standing with his camera at the end of a runway watching them descend, he freezes their headlong 200 mile per hour motion, capturing all the details of their shapes and construction with absolute precision.
Milstein is working here in essence as a portrait photographer. He is not interested in the context in which his subjects exists, nor is he particularly interested in depicting what they are doing at the moment he clicks his shutter. What he is interested in is character, the individual qualities that come together to form something unique and personal. As a pilot himself and a life long airplane enthusiast, Milstein is familiar with the individual personality differences that aircraft posses, and he brings that appreciation to his studied, typological approach in photographing modern jet aircraft.
Milstein’s photographs are fully as beautiful as they should be, given the elegant combination of function and utility in modern airliners that seven decades of development have bestowed upon them. His photographs permit the viewer to regain the correct perspective, to see just how beautiful the airliners that continually comb our skies truly are. The AirCraft series bridges the gap between lovers of art and lovers of aircraft as these elegant photographs of commercial airliners have quickly become contemporary icons.
EDUCATION
University of California at Berkeley, Bachelor of Architecture
SELECT EXHIBITIONS
Aircraft: the Jet as Art, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Wash. DC, Nov 2011– Nov 2012
Cuba: On the Streets, Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, July 2011
Beyond Place, Portland Museum of Art, Portland, OR, (group), December 2009 – March 2010
Looking Up, Ambient Projects, Las Vegas, NV, (group), December 2009 – March 2010
Globetrotting, Bonni Benrubi Gallery, New York, NY, (group), September – November 2009
Aircraft: The Jet as Art, The Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, KS, (solo), August – December 2008
New Typologies, New York Photo Festival, curated by Martin Parr, (group), May 2008
Aircraft: The Jet as Art, Young Gallery, Brussels, Belgium, (solo), February 2008
Aircraft 2, Paul Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, (solo), April 2007
Aircraft, ego gallery, Barcelona, Spain, (solo), September - October 2006
Flight Plan, Morgan Lehman Gallery New York, NY, (group), 2006
Aircraft, Paul Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, (2 person), 2005
Cuba, Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, OR, (solo), 2005
Best of Show, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA, (group), 2005
New Photography, Newspace Center for Photography, Portland OR, (group), 2005
Work by New Means, Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR, (group), 2003
Terra, Pietra e Cielo, Comunita di San Leolino, Florence, Italy, (solo) 2001
Color of Light, Klienart/James Art Center Gallery, Woodstock, NY, (solo), 1999
Jeffrey Milstein Photography, Donskoj Gallery, Kingston, NY, (solo), 1997
SELECT PUBLICATIONS AND AWARDS
German GQ, March 2011
Kilimanjaro Magazine, Winter 2010
BRIGHT Magazine, cover, June 2010
Libération, May 19, 2010
Cuba: Photographs by Jeffrey Milstein, hardcover monograph, Monacelli Press, April 2010
Chronogram Magazine, April 2010
The Digital Eye: Photographic Art in the Electronic Age, Sylvia Wolf, Henry Art Gallery & Prestel Press, 2010
Elle Décor, March 2010
Working Class Magazine, interview by Marcel Dagenais, March 2010
Esquire, September 2009
Photo Review, cover, fall 2009
Vision Magazine, June 2008
Wired Magazine, December 2008
Die Zeit Magazine, cover, January 2008
Creative Review, June 2007
Men’s Vogue, April 2007
Smithsonian Air And Space Magazine, September 2007
AirCraft: The Jet as Art, hardcover monograph, Abrams, May 2007
Eyemazing, 10 page portfolio, May 2007
Libération, March 2007
Esquire Russia, March 2007
European Photography, eight page portfolio, October 2006
PDN Photo Annual, May 2006
Los Angeles Times, December 22, 2005
PQ / Photography Quarterly, issue #92, 2005
PDN Digital Photography Contest, First Place, 2005
American Photography 21, 2005
Photo Review, Honorable Mention 2005
Graphis Photo Annual, 2005
photomagazin, cover and six pages, June 2004
COLLECTIONS
Akron Art Museum, Akron, OH
Bank of America Collection
Center for Photography, Woodstock, NY
George Eastman House, Rochester, NY
Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland
Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR
Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, SUNY, New Paltz, NY
The Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, KS
artist statement
Flying an airplane was one of my earliest dreams. Building and flying all the model planes I could afford, I became intimately familiar with aircraft design, and at the age of 17, I received my pilot’s license.
Heavy metal, as the wide body jets are known, is the ultimate achievement in engineering and design. While aircraft evoke many different feelings, since 9/11, no one can ever again look at a large airliner without the distant but ominous memory of how easily they were turned into weapons by a small band of terrorists. They are a symbol of how vulnerable our highly technological society has become.
In this portfolio I explore a typology of the varied cruciform shapes of jet aircraft flying precisely overhead as if frozen in space. I have decontextualized these highly detailed photographs to express the complexity and beauty of form. That these giant conglomerations of aluminum, can gracefully lift from earth is amazing. That they can return safely some hours later on another part of the globe is even more amazing. My aircraft photographs are an attempt to capture that sense of beauty and wonder but also the vulnerability that we all feel in today’s world.